What little known tips and tricks do you have for searching on Google?

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Sometimes you need to put in brackets to express precedence clearly, for example "five plus seven divided by six" and "(five plus seven) divided by six" give different answers.

If the calculator doesn't kick in you can attempt to coerce it by appending "=" to your query, for example "1+2=".

It knows most units and constants (including currencies) but it isn't 100% perfect, so if something doesn't work try rewording it.

Bonus tip for users of Chrome and Firefox: If you type a calculator query into the omnibar / search box and wait for suggestions to pop up, the first suggestion will be the answer. Saves you a pageload!

Lastly if you think it will work, it quite possibly will! It handles a wide array of inputs, outputs and operators, someone pointed me to a comprehensive list here.

Fill in the Blank (*)

Sometimes the best way to ask a question is to get Google to fill in the blank by adding an asterisk (*) at the part of the sentence or question that you want finished into the Google search box. For example:

It might seem trivial, but it has a couple uses: for one, you can go to the site logged out without any cookies set. For another, you can still watch videos even if your filter blocks video.google.com. :D

This was also in a link someone posted, but I use it all the time @ work when a site is blocked:

cache:http://www.somecoolsite.com

It doesn't give you a perfect repr of the site, but if you're just trying to read stuff (like answers to programming questions that are blocked by Websense for being in the "Business & Economy" category), it works great.

I use inurl: and intitle: to narrow down searches all the time, they can be useful if you are looking for specific pages about a topic, rather than a page with the term anywhere on it, eg intitle:webapps could be useful if you were looking for articles about that topic.

A couple of people mentioned * but I found out a while ago that you can include it inside a phrase search eg "i * my job" finds I ♥ My Job, I love my job, and I heart my job as phrases. You can even combine all of the above like this intitle:"i * my job"